Press Tour: 'Dads' cast, creators discuss offensive humor

Under any circumstances, the press tour panel for FOX's "Dads" was going to be an awkward affair. The live-action comedy from Seth MacFarlane and fellow "Family Guy" writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild stars Seth Green and Giovanni Ribisi as best friends and business partners whose estranged fathers (Peter Riegert and Martin Mull) breeze into town and offend everyone with their old-school attitudes. Among other gags, it has Mull dubbing a boxing video game "Punch the Puerto Rican," has Riegert offended by being mistaken for the Eric Stoltz character in "Mask," and has Green and Ribisi convincing an employee played by Brenda Song to dress up like a giggling anime schoolgirl to impress a group of Asian investors.

It is, for those jokes and so many others, pretty universally the least popular fall pilot among the TCA. And then FOX president Kevin Reilly stoked the flames in his executive session by saying, "Do I think all the jokes right now are in calibration in the pilot? I don’t." He also begged the TCA's patience on the matter, reading excerpts of scathing reviews for "The Big Bang Theory" pilot. (That is, indeed, a show many critics hated at the start but have come to like, but it wasn't one being dinged for racism back in 2007.)

"If this show still (has) low hanging-fruit jokes that seem in bad taste and haven’t been earned with intelligence," Reilly said, "and the characters have not become full blown over the course of the next summer months — number 1, the show’s not going to work. And number 2, you should take it to task, and we’ll talk about that in January."

So by the time the "Dads" cast and creative team (which included comedy veteran Mike Scully, who once ran "The Simpsons" and has worked on "Everybody Loves Raymond," "Parks and Recreation" and other hits) arrived late in the day, we had a pilot that many in the room found offensive, as well as one even the head of the network only partly defended.

The panelists knew what kind of room they were walking into, though. This wasn't like the "2 Broke Girls" fiasco from a few tours back, where creator Michael Patrick King was completely unprepared for, and defiant about, questions about ethnic stereotyping. Everyone on the stage knew what was coming, and they had answers at the ready.

Early on, for instance, Sulkin acknowledged, "In the pilot, we all noticed some things that we'd like to change or tweak moving forward. We ideally want to keep it insulting and irreverent, but the most important thing is that it's funny. If we missed the mark a few times in the pilot, I think we're aiming to hit it better."

Scully noted the evolving nature of good and bad taste, and how Homer Simpson strangling Bart was once controversial and "is now considered just a lovable act of child abuse," and noted that context is everything. When Mr. Burns says something racist, or Krusty dusts off an old routine full of outdated racial stereotypes, it makes sense because of context; "If Marge said it, it would be wrong."

So far, so good. Then Green attempted to set the bar far higher than "Dads" — at least the version suggested by the pilot — can clear by comparing the show's more controversial moments to "All in the Family" or "The Jeffersons," and the way those landmark '70s sitcoms tackled race relations, the war in Vietnam, and other hot-button topics.

"I think that we've become a really careful culture," Green said. "I've had the weirdest conversations with people about what they feel is racist."

Perhaps realizing their leading man had overreached, Sulkin joked, "I think having Brenda in that (schoolgirl) costume is our anti-Vietnam stance."

"We don't want the show to be the racial insult comedy show," said Scully. "It's a comedy about fathers and sons, and you want to strike that relateable thing, and they're telling stories about their dads and the inappropriate things they do,but also how that then slips out through you... As you get older, you sometimes find things slipping out of you, and you go, 'Oh, shit, that's my dad coming out.'"

"It's the racist canary in the coal mine," added Wellesley. "'That's my dad. Are we becoming those guys?'"

Sulkin admitted, "That was something that we didn't think was a socially provocative moment... We thought it would lead to a funny scene. And if that didn't land with you guys or a lot of people, we understand that. We're trying to learn the things that land and don't, and learn from that and change it in upcoming shows."

Vanessa Minnillo, who plays Ribisi's wife, said she grew up in Charleston, SC dealing with a lot of racial prejudice and misunderstanding and enjoyed the way the pilot shines a light on that kind of boorish, insensitive behavior.

Scully insisted he didn't find the "Punch the Puerto Rican" joke offensive, and Mull said, "When I delivered the line, I felt no animus whatsoever."

"I worked on 'Everybody Loves Raymond,' which is not considered by any means an offensive show, but we did an episode where Frank Barone used the word "Chinaman" twice in telling a story about the war," Scully recalled. "There was no flak about it. It was real, out of his mouth. If Ray said it, it would be wrong, because Ray comes from a different generation. I always go back to context for material like this. Sometimes, when you're trying to push a line or push the boundaries, you're going to go across it a few times. Hopefully, we'll spot that ourselves or the audience will indicate it to us and we'll make a decision based on that."

There were times when the critics and panelists seemed to be understanding each other, even if they didn't agree, and others where the two groups seemed to be talking past one another. And though the room's biggest objection was to Song in the fetish outfit, Song herself barely said a word until the panel's final question, when someone innocuously asked her to tell us about her character. Song was clearly wound up by all that had been discussed, and noted that, as a Disney Channel veteran doing an adult comedy, "No matter what I do, it's going to offend someone, somehow." She said she found the "Dads" pilot funny, and that she and her friends sometimes pretend to be stereotypical Asian immigrants to get out of being hit on by guys ("Oh, sorry, me no speak English!" she said in a thick accent).

She justified the schoolgirl gag as her character doing whatever it took to close the deal, but also admitted that when she read that scene in the script, she had to say to herself, "'Alright, Brenda, this is your job!' And you go in and you do it." It's possible her hesitation had more to do with the skimpy outfit than any racial implications, but the session ended abruptly before anyone could ask a follow-up.

"I get to do what I've been dreaming about since I was 7 years old," Song said right before a FOX publicist ended the Q&A, "and I get to do it in such great company that I can't complain."

What Reilly said about comedies evolving and changing over time is true. "The Big Bang Theory" pilot is pretty terrible, but that show found itself after a while. On the other hand, "2 Broke Girls" never learned from its mistakes (and its ratings are too good for King to believe he's making any mistakes at all), and it's not like "Family Guy" is exactly a bastion of sensitivity and understanding; it just has an easier time getting away with this stuff because we accept certain things from cartoon characters that we don't when they're flesh-and-blood. (As Scully, who's worked extensively in both animation and live-action, put it, "There's a level of separation that lets the audience accept more, and hopefully we'll find that line as we go on.")

Because both groups in the room were willing to engage in a dialogue, there was never the tinge of ugliness that we sometimes get with shows that the critics strongly dislike. But I also don't know that anyone left the panel convinced that "Dads" would be turning into a 21st century Norman Lear sitcom by midseason.

Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com

I don't see any evidence that MacFarlane is actually racist. My sense is that he just thinks jokes that play on racial stereotypes are funny, and doesn't have a problem with including that type of humor in his shows. For him to be racist, I think he'd need to either need to believe the stereotypes are true or have a specific agenda to undermine minorities by perpetuating stereotypes, and I don't believe that either of those two things are true.

i'm sorry but the comparisons to "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons", as a child of the 1970s just rubbed me really wrong. this was during Vietnam and major social change. 2013 is a totally different time. and honestly there's no excuse for racism like what i've seen in just clips of this show.

Jay Leno in an interview i saw recently said something to the effect that when it's offensive and it's not funny it's racist, but when it's offensive and funny it's just plain funny. i think that is where "Dads" is trying to go but it sounds like the funny isn't there.

and honestly, do we really need a show like this, about two white guys and their fathers, in the landscape of sitcom TV. it just seems 100% worn out and tired. zzzz.

as far as the Brenda Song stripper outfit (or whatever that's supposed to be) it was interesting to hear how she had to force herself to do that. i think in our pr0n-ified culture these tropes of Asian women sex objects need to be considered for what they are.

i'm friends with some Asian women who laugh about the cultural divide between Asian and White culture a lot. i get what Brenda Song was saying. but between Han on 2 Broke Girls and Brenda Song's role here, how much does this represent or add to the cultural dysmorphia and stereotyping?

i have two nieces who are multi-ethnic and i would not want them to see these images -- for the Asian stereotyping (they are part Korean) and for the sextoy portrayal of a woman.

and my biggest gripe with this show, to finish my rant, is that it looks neither smart nor funny -- two things that "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons" definitely were.

please, with all this great TV on, the networks should be ashamed of crud like this.

The thing that strikes a wrong note for me is that the fathers sound like characters from those 70's sitcoms, i.e. they grew up in the 40's and 50's, rather than men who grew up in the 60's and 70's. Archie Bunker worked back then because he represented a substantial number of men of that era. These two sound like they just jumped out of Doc Brown's Delorean.

This left me just feeling really sorry for Martin Mull. What happened to him? Fernwood2Night was great, and his own project. He had excellent comedy albums with music no less. Then he and Fred Willard became the go-to for second-string characters in just about everything, including the damn cat's voice in Sabrina Teenage Witch. Of course if he wants to he can produce fully-rounded characters, like on Roseanne, but in general, what a cautionary tale from the 70s.

Why are people not offended the pilot is both racist and sexist? This is what Asian females need to put up with both fictional and reality in Hollywood. The poor girl needed to force herself to accept this is a paid job; guess this is as good as it's gets.

And the fact the studio actually release the trailer for general public is just beyond depressing.

Weird to say this but the often spotty Sullivan & Son had one of its best episodes ever last night: The A-storyline featured some great -- and hilarious -- work by Jodi Long as Ock Ja (Steve's mom).

She had great material and did nuanced work that was actually all about stereotypes and being an immigrant. It doesn't hurt that the main character played by Steve Byrne is half Irish and half Korean but I hardly notice that. It is really Jodi Long's character, the broadest and most difficult one, who often rides a fine line between offensive and not. Last night she killed it -- did an amazing job. Made me laugh and got me a bit choked up too. Dan Lauria was good too. (And don't get me started on that brave ham Christine Ebersole -- I couldn't stop laughing and rewound her bit a few times, still chuckle thinking about it.)

So I think there _is_ a way to do this kind of funny and turn it on its nose, get a laugh, have some interesting, thoughtful context behind it, and god-forbid humanize the characters. I guess that's the worst part about the Brenda Song character -- she can't imbue it with anything because she's forcing herself into this awful blank slate of a stereotype.

No matter how much of a civil dialog both the critics and the creators were able to have (kudos?!?) it's still WRONG.

I'm not even sure if the writers are aware why the Brenda Song as a schoolgirl gag is offensive and promotes negative stereotypes. Largely it is dependent on whether the joke is supposed to be Ribisi and Green's characters are sexist racists who misunderstand that Asian investors are people just like them and end up paying a price for this or if the joke is supposed to be there are two kinds of Asians in this world the good Brenda Song Americanized kind and the bad Long Duk Dong horn dog deviants from Asia and the bad kind can be tricked by the good kind with a little direction from their white bosses. They probably could have done the same sort of jokes by just having them put Song's character in meetings with the investors instead of telling us from the pilot our characters traffic in stereotypes and exploitation.

I'm not sure if the Brenda Song gag is really "racist." The "schoolgirl aesthetic" is genuinely popular in parts of East Asia, particularly in Japan. Incorporating it into the context of this show may be derivative and somewhat exploitative, but it's not any more culturally offensive than pointing out an American fondness for superheros and cowboy boots. If a foreign tv program depicted an American woman dressed like Daisy Duke, I'd consider it simplistic and stereotypical, but not offensive. The real crime, from what I can tell, is that the gag is not funny.

I really think people gotta stop mixing up not being PC and racism.like people who had said before me, the "school girl outfit" IS genuinely a popular outfit is Asia. When comics have to be afraid of being labelled racist because of their jokes, it just kills creativity and I personally hate these bullsh*t headlines. "Is the new Seth MacFarlane live-action sitcom racist?" Really? If the show isn't funny, that's fine people. call it not funny or that its humor too out there for you but calling a show racist is just feels so over the top.

After this year's Oscars, I read an editorial about the Onion tweet about Quvenzhané Wallis which argued that the context of who was saying something offensive was an indespensible component to judging whether it really was offensive. The author argued that on that basis the tweet had not been an attack on Wallis, but was a satire of the media turning on actresses for no apparent reason except for controversy. If it had been said by somebody who was capable of sincerely dismissing a little girl with a sexist epithet, then it would have been indefensible. In deciding whether or not Seth MacFarlane's work is racist or not, I try to judge it by his intent, by his various shows' and movie's apparent point of view on race (and gender, for that matter). The problem is that none of his work really has a definitive point of view on the touchy subjects he routinely plays with. Whether you like his work (and I enjoy much of it), his biggest failing is that none of it stands for anything. His productions are joke machines and if the jokes fall flat there's nothing more to them. Are they truly racist? I'm not sure, but they certainly don't have anything constructive to say about race.

I have a quick trigger when it comes to people I perceive as being homophobic.

But even in my anger, I've started to try really hard to not to shout, "HOMOPHOBE!" at the top of my lungs.

I will instead point out their raging hypocrisy (usually having something to do with cherry-picking Bible verses) and try my best to shame them by confronting them with Jesus's message of love and leaving judgment up to God as they cling to Mosaic Law that they don't even follow.

That being said...

... I'm sick of this. Sick of political correctness. Sick of people demanding what is tantamount to an end to free speech to make them feel better about themselves.

You're offended? Okay. Good for you. It's your right.

But you have no right to end someone's speech whom you find offensive.

You can ignore it. I do all the time. But you have no right under the Constitution to demand the end to anyone's speech that is not creating a dangerous situation (like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded room would do).

Free Speech is not an ideological thing. It is not a political thing.

It's inalienable.

I don't care for Seth MacFarlane. Not because I perceive him as "racist" which has become now, such a subjective and overused word by certain people.

I don't like him because, like Matt & Trey, I think he's a lazy comedy writer.

And it sounds like NONE of what's in this pilot is actually racist (except, again, to the certain people who overuse and fling that word around when they're losing arguments or when they're in need of page views)...

... it sounds as if it's just really lazy comedy.

A very wise man once said that in recent times, when certain people fling that word, "racist," at someone else, it's now a supremely narcissistic act.

It has nothing to do with the person you're trying to disparage.

It has everything to do with you, the person who's making the accusation.

When so many people are using this word, they are using it to proclaim, "I'm NOT a racist."

I swear, so many people have absolutely no idea what that word means anymore, they're so "offended" by everything around them all the time.

They don't listen to common sense. They don't care about logic. All they want to do is find something that offends them, so they can lash out at others by decrying them as "racist" or yes, "homophobic" or "misogynistic" so they can, with those accusations, boldy proclaim to anyone listening that they are NOT those things.

Narcissists all.

Sigh. Anyways, I'm sure Alan will delete this, even though nothing I'm saying is in any way ideological or political.

So I'll just leave you with this while it's up. It's the same thing I tell the certain people who clothe their fear of gay people with poor interpretations of their religious texts:

Love. Just love. And if you do that, whatever God you believe in will take care of the rest; take care of you.

If you don't like something, ESPECIALLY COMEDY, which should be allowed to push across boundaries without race-baiters waiting in the wings to shout "Racist!" the first chance they get...

HISTORYOFMATT - I think you're mistaken on a few points. First, you dismiss the concept of genuine offensiveness. Are there people who make unfair, uninformed, or downright disingenuous accusations of racism? Definitely. I find them just as tedious and irritating as you do. But there is legitimate racism in the media and it should always be called out. Doctors sometimes misdiagnose a patient with cancer, but that doesn't mean the medical community ceases to treat real tumors. To argue that people should be quietly offended and do nothing both allows racism to fester and flies in the face of your pro-free speech message. People are free to speak in opposition to what others say, and the Constitution gives all private citizens the right to petition a television network to alter or cancel a program. Indeed, the First Ammendment ensures that we all have the right to express offensive ideas, but it doesn't give anybody the right to be paid to express them on national television.

Why is it the people who are offended by stereotypes who are always called race baiters? It's those who portray others as less than themselves who have acted provocatively. They are the ones who set the bait. It's the people who respond in outrage that are drawn into the situation. I don't like being insulted. Nobody does. I don't think people tune into sitcoms hoping to see an affront to their race and culture. Frankly, with the lack of diversity on so much of television, minority viewers are lucky to see any representation of themselves. So when they do, it must feel like an even greater betrayal that an all too rare depiction of someone like them has been reduced to a caricature.

You can argue that the Asian schoolgirl trope or a "Punch the Puerto Rican" game are silly things to get worked up over, but that's only if you fail to consider the cumulative effect which creates a culture of dehumanization. The stereotype of all Asians being martial arts masters seems silly, right? I saw a documentary about police brutality which mentioned in passing a case in which a cop in his cruiser was pursuing an Asian suspect who was fleeing on foot. The Asian man had not threatened the officer, but instead of apprehending him he ran him over with his police car. Asked to explain his actions, the cop said that the Asian man must have known karate or kung fu, and therefore it was too dangerous to attempt to physically subdue him. The submissive Asian sexpot may seem harmless, but I have heard many men fetishize Asian women as naturally servile and eager for a man to essentially own them. Anything that allows us to see others as types rather than individuals hurts us all, not just "the other."

I don't think race or gender or religion should be out of bounds for comedy to explore, but that right needs to be exercised responsibly. And if someone fails to do so, the responsibility is ours to confront them however uncomfortable it may be. Because what is truly un-American is the idea that one voice should be heard and all others silenced.

P.S. Who is this wise man you referred to? I'm curious to see the full remarks that you alluded to.